Representatives of Small States, practitioners, government officials, members of environmental/climate change NGOs, and academics gathered at the London office of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP on 6 and 7 September 2018 for the third Centre for Small States and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr annual Small States conference.
Nine panels involving 30 speakers—including Partner Steven Finizio, Senior Associates Stuart Bruce, Desley Horton, and Jonathan Lim, and Associate Dr. Carina Alcoberro Llivina—focused over two days on the different avenues to resolve international environmental disputes especially in and with Small States, with environmental science and environmental and climate change politics providing the background to that discussion.
Sir David Baragwanath (former President of the New Zealand Law Commission, Appellate Court Judge, and former President of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon), Teleiai Dr Lalotoa Mulitalo (Executive Director, Samoan Law Reform Commission), Eden Charles (former Ambassador at Trinidad and Tobago to the UN), and Elisabeth Mrema (Director, Legal Division, UNEP) set the scene for the conference by exploring the different dimensions of environmental dispute resolution in small states in general and in Pacific Island Countries in particular.
Lord Carnwath, Justice of The United Kingdom Supreme Court, gave the Day 1 keynote speech, in which he raised the question of whether environmental dispute resolution was going to be evidence-based given the scientific uncertainty in relation to many environmental issues.
Graham Dunning QC delivered the keynote address on Day 2 of the conference, in which he suggested that the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh should be seen as an important and workable tool in the sustainable management of scarce global resources. He argued that this agreement should be considered a model for international environmental dispute resolution.
In addition to Dr Mulitalo and Eden Charles, climate change expert Penehuro Lefale, Frank Paulsen, Chair of the Solomon Law Commission, and Dr Troy Waterman from the University of the West Indies (Cave Hill), Barbados, represented small state voices on various panels. The panelists were supported, inter alia, by members of the audience from Tokelau, Malta, St Lucia, Samoa, Guyana, the Seychelles, and the British Virgin Islands.
The conference was organised by Dr Petra Butler, Co-Director of the Centre for Small States, Professor at Victoria University of Wellington, and Scholar-in-Residence at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr; Partner Steven Finizio; and Catherine Iorns, Associate Professor at Victoria University and specialist in (international) environmental law.
Videos, a full list of speakers, reports, papers and photographs from the conference are available on the Centre for Small States website.
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